Painting Nature

Nearly all artists worry about their style or the uniquely individual look of their paintings. How can this be achieved in an honest way without gimmicks? It actually happens organically, without your concentrated efforts, because our brain learns. The most crucial element to this process is constant work. Through your artistic life, you will both signup for classes and also find other artists that you relate to their work, thinking to yourself, “I wish I could paint like that artist.” 

In some ways, the painting style that becomes you is not unlike the unexpected evolution of your handwriting. Some of us are old enough to have learned writing in school using the Palmer Method, and once mastered, we began to alter it. By the time we are in high school, it is a new entity, still evolving into adulthood yet recognizable as our own hand and your signature. Court cases are decided by comparing the individually unique elements of handwriting; of course, now many students print and cursive is a lost art, including the skill developed while writing.

This is how it works. The Hebbian Theory or associative learning is summarized by this statement, “Cells that fire together wire together.” Not only do these neurons learn to work together, but they also activate each other. Playing the piano, hitting a baseball, or painting is all the same to your neurons; you improve with great practice; without practice you do not move forward. Every student thinks there must be a trick or some advice hidden yet shared between the great artists of the world, and frankly, that is it. This is different from creativity, but it is an essential part of repeatedly creating something with your artistic elements of style.

In 1899 an American artist and art educator from Massachusetts named Arthur Wesley Dow published his first edition of Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers. Arthur Dow pulled from his vast and diverse study and education of the arts to bring to this country a basic understanding of the artistic process and its value in everyday life. Unlike our European teachers, Dow expressed his desire to foster the importance of personal expression for every walk of life, not just artists. His books became the basis for our high school curriculum throughout most of the American public schools. In the early 1900s, when Georgia O’Keeffe was a high school student in Wisconsin, it is more than likely she was exposed to Dow’s textbooks.

The ability to organize a picture plane within the confines of the four edges was faithfully taught through many exercises to high school students throughout America, brings us back to our Hebbian Theory and the importance of practice. What a perfect time in life to be exposed to line, color, masses, and harmony in a structure of exercises and repetition. The book’s ninth edition from 1920 is still available from Dover Publications under the title Composition, Understanding Line, Notan, and Color.

Creativity, on the other hand, is the ability to take a little of this knowledge and a little of that process and create a new thing. I started out drawing and illustrating; each teacher and each job taught me something. When I began teaching, I taught Art Appreciation, History of Graphic Design, Design, Color Design, Color Drawing, and Figure Study in the university environment. Each class I taught added to my knowledge, and I can see it in my work. However, I believe it is the collection of artists I chose to study over my many years of painting that had the most profound impact. We all learn from each other, and because it is added to our own visual process, it comes out new. I used to walk around my class at Georgetown and marvel at how twenty-two students could be doing the same assignment twenty-two different ways, and none were copying my demo.

It is the complexity of the artistic process that creates value in art and painting. It is the reason there is an art museum in nearly every major town. If you feel it is taking you a while to find your way, the most influential teacher is your ability to keep working.

As an assignment, find three painters you love and study them, read what they have written, research who their teachers were and how their paintings have evolved.